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Value-Added Products (VAP)

Many of the scientific needs of the ARM Climate Research Facility are met through the analysis and processing of existing data products into "value-added" products, or VAPs. Despite extensive instrumentation deployed at the ARM sites, there will always be quantities of interest that are either impractical or impossible to measure directly or routinely. Physical models using ARM instrument data as inputs are implemented as VAPs and can help fill some of the unmet measurement needs of the ARM Facility or improve the quality of existing measurements. In addition, when more than one measurement is available, ARM also produces "best-estimate" VAPs.

All VAPs produce c1 level output files, while newer VAPs, which have been updated to the ARM quality control standards, produce both c1 and s1 output files (see ARM file naming conventions). The s1 files are summary files that contain a subset of the c1 file variables (generally the primary variables), have simplified quality control flags, and have known 'bad' values set to missing data. When available, s1 files are the recommended file for the general user.